 Negro League's baseball is a very important part of African-American history, as well as understanding the entire American history story. Baseball wasn't played in a vacuum, it was a part of the overall American landscape. And that's Major League Baseball and Negro League Baseball. Black baseball players are not immune to the troubles of African-Americans in our society. It was important to understand their stories as human beings and as family men, and how that goes over time with the larger story of African-Americans in our country, both the triumphs and the tragedies. They were immensely talented athletes, among the best that America's ever had to offer. They lived in the shadows, in the background. People really weren't familiar with their stories. What's important for people to understand is not just their accomplishments on the field, but their lives off the field. They were really early civil rights pioneers. They were engaged in various civil rights discussions and issues long before it was common in the U.S. Jackie Robinson integrated baseball at a time when Martin Luther King was still in college and nobody had heard of him. This is very much part of every baseball fan's history to understand how African-Americans came to both impact the game and change the game. So black baseball players in the 20s, 30s, and 40s were aggressive baseball players. They had a lot of speed, they had power, they had all the things that you would see in white baseball, but they certainly did it exponentially in some areas, especially the speed game. The style of play was aggressive, it was creative, although they didn't give black people credit for being great thinkers on the ball diamond. That's the reason why a lot of white teams lost because they underestimate the mental ability of these black teams. Even though you might have heard of them, they had lots of experience in the game and they were playing for some brilliant managers. It was something that drew thousands of fans from all across the country, and of course in international settings as well. They faced discrimination wherever they went. Lodgy and Eden were two of the biggest obstacles. There's a period in our country, especially across the Midwest, where traveling while black was always dangerous. There were Jim Crow laws, there were black codes, often they were unwritten. Local customs like a black person couldn't be out after dusk or before dawn. Historians have described as sundown towns. You were out after a certain time and they didn't know what you were doing, you could be subject to questioning and arrest. And so there were curfews on people, and for a baseball team traveling whose schedules could be kind of erratic, you had to know where it was safe to go. You know, you read about the Green Book. The book would list hotels they could sleep at, restaurants they could eat at, gas stations where they could fill up gas. Any black baseball team could have written the Green Book because they were rogue warriors. So it was a very difficult road where they had to be innovative, creative, and persevere. Racism and segregation affected them and all they wanted to do was play baseball. So we want to be a resource for that. We want to be a place where people can come, learn, and understand those issues as well. And by doing so you'll meet some very interesting characters, but also some great, talented baseball players. I think the important part of the Negro baseball leagues is that most people are walking around now, you know, they wear cool jerseys from the Negro leagues, but that's not knowing the Negro leagues, right? You need to know their story, the story of how these men persevered and the struggles they had to go against just to be successful. So we're very fortunate at the museum to have the artwork from Greg Kreindler through the generosity of J. Carwell. The whole theme of what we were trying to do is try to bring these players who had always been seen in black and white photography to life and make them real people, people who had their own stories. Greg finds amazing details, so paint something and I'll say, well, that wasn't there and I'll go back and look at the photo and that was. And even though they are primarily photorealistic art, they are very vibrant. They seem to bring these baseball players to life, especially those players from the 1800s and the early 1900s that we don't have a lot of photography of. What started off as 60 portraits eventually expanded to 240. Anything, that's a lot of art. 200 is just even a small slice of the great number of important players and characters that were part of the Negro leagues. It expands a lot of baseball fans' horizons in terms of understanding that there were a lot of great players in these leagues. More than just the ones that you know, more than just even the Hall of Fame inductees. There are some very interesting stories that are brought out by the artwork and we hope that they are able to gravitate and find their favorite player.